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Full Circle
The magical thing about our dear little town though was that not a single person living in it was sane. We were technically citizens of Gildor but only loosely. Some hundred or so years ago when the Kingdom was growing they ended up annexing a small tribe of forest dwellers who farmed the land and were very talented at nothing in particular aside from being stubborn and extremely morbid. Over so many years the little village turned into a town, and the town into a small city. As the corruption spread though, all the immigrants from central and western Gildor bailed ship and the city's population began to shrink once more. When horrifying beasts stalk the roads through the woods, trade and commerce suffer predictably. Eventually it was declared town law that all men who had seen eighteen summers be forced to serve in their military fighting those beasts, and keeping that creeping border between Rhivic and Gildor at bay. After that, the only remaining people in Gerdad were the descendants of that stupid little tribe too stubborn to leave, soldiers sent from central Gildor, and mercenaries. I mention this because as you may have guessed, my family was a member of that stupid little tribe. If you were wondering, so was Illiv. In fact, the face paint he wore so often was a traditional sort of paint worn by those who had recently lost someone on Mourning-Day, which fell on the darkest day of every winter. Like I mentioned before, Illiv really fit in well with our crappy little family, all the more so after my uncle died fighting on the border. Illiv and I were both also enlisted, and spent a large amount of our time doing drills and fighting. There was a lot of anger in our fighting in those days. There was hate for those despicable, gods forsaken abominations. I had the pleasure of watching my uncle ripped in half when he died, and the little warmth in me that had remained after the incident in the river began to cool. With my uncle dead, it fell on my head to care for my two younger sisters and aunt. With him gone though, Illiv spent even more time over, just because he was the sort of nice guy who would help out with things like cutting firewood and cooking. Well not just. It was pretty obvious that he cared about us a lot. He had no one else in his life, and we all really cared about him, even though he was a bit odd. My sisters especially got to him. They were ten and twelve years old, and both adored him. Every time they saw him they'd tackle him with their hugs and drown him in love, and he just stood there and pretended to be unimpressed. I could tell though that it affected him. He got a bit less cynical. He talked now and then about how he'd fight against death, because since it was inevitable it didn't matter when it took him. It made little sense to me, but that's what emotions will do. I'll never forget when we threw him a birthday party. He never knew his birthday, and in the past when I had asked him he said he never really thought about it. He had been spending so much time with our little clan though that we felt like we owed it to him to show him how much we appreciated him. So, we picked his favorite day, Mourning-Day, and while he spent the entire day out in one of our town's various massive graveyards mutilating himself, we stayed inside and baked him a cake. I also took his favorite sword to one of the local blacksmiths to have him sketch a symbol into the base of the blade. It was the rune in our people's first tongue for "need" on the other side of the blade was etched the rune for "knowledge." I always tried to focus on the more positive aspects of his philosophy. He came home, and both my sisters, my aunt, and I were all dressed in the traditional flowing black garb that he often wore, and had our faces painted to match. My sisters both hugged him and he broke down crying. There was a lot of emotional talk that day, and we ended the night outside with candles, singing the Guiding song of the Weary Dead as our patron goddess once demanded be done on the eve of every third day. It was one of the best nights of my life. The glow of that night faded quickly though. Word had it that an Elder being had risen among the Forsaken to the south, and that a darkness gathered there. Gerdad filled with soldiers and mercenaries, as the evil around us was expected to grow manifold. The nights stayed dark too long. It was chill in the spring time, but no new life had grown yet. The trees did not sprout leaves, and flowers hid underground. For days there was a pall over the town. People had nightmares. Things died and did not grow. Then, one day things began to clear. The sky was grey in the morning, and as I stepped outside to see Zed in the yard beginning his rituals I noticed a few tiny leafy plants poking through the dirt around our house. I listened to his droning chants until he was finished. They were calming. "The fighting we're scheduled for tomorrow should be a bit easier. The Elder one must have made his move south of here. I might even be inclined to be so optimistic as to say that he may have been slain." "No." I sighed. "Well, it would be a nice thing and neither of us can really know." He turned around, and I saw that his makeup had changed. It was more ferocious. Savage lines dragging through his eyes and mock blood dripping from his chin down his throat. "I'm going to die today, Zed. Unquala gifted me a vision last night. Take the children and run far from here. He is coming." His voice had no give in it. I had not been afraid in a very long time, but the look in his eyes told me that he was serious. I didn't doubt him. There was hate in my heart though. Hate, and denial. I refused to accept death, mine or his. I refused to accept that the gods were guiding me, that they took my parents, my uncle, my older brother, all to show me my place in their designs. I would show Illiv the zealousness and the strength of my conviction. My hate for death would match his love for it a thousand fold. I sat down with ice in my veins next to him and took his paints. I began to recite the prayers of old, as my mother had taught me as a child. I drew my blood in sacrifice. My youngest sister walked out then. "Zed? What are you doing?" "I am preparing, Tamara. Tell Sofia to grab her things. Auntie, too. Tell them both that it's an emergency." She paused for a moment, wide eyed and frightened. I glanced at Illiv, and another crack tore through my heart. There was despair in his face as he looked at her. I remembered something I had told him the other day, painfully clear. "Illiv, death isn't just you leaving this world. It isn't an escape. It's the entire world leaving you. It's an abandonment." We both grabbed our swords and after briefly instructing our aunt to take the children west we headed to the barracks to obtain our shoddy sets of armor. We were racing there when we began to hear screaming. There was no doubt in our minds as to what it was. It was desperate screaming. Screaming that came from the soul, ripping out panic and dread from a person's most primal terrified desire to exist and hurling it like a bolt to the sky. It was a sound we were both familiar with. We paused though in confusion. It wasn't coming from the east. It was coming from the Fletcher's shop twenty feet down the road. We looked to each other, silently questioning whether it was worth investigating. Our eyes communicated, needing no words. I would go retrieve armor from the barracks and he would go identify the source of the screaming. The barracks were not far from where we stood, and I felt adrenaline surging me forward past my normal limits. I heard something unusual from behind the drum of blood pumping in my ears. A great cracking noise behind me. I was only a few dozen feet from the barracks, watching a buzz of people rushing in and out, and I turned around to face the noise. Time stood still again. I stared at a hole in the cobbled street, ten feet across with a Forsaken standing above it, tall and ferocious with long claws, bony plating, and burning eyes. Lesser kin were emerging from the hole, looking like corpses bursting free from hell. Revelation dawned upon me then. Tunnels. I stood, gaping, until a hand slapped my back and a stocky bearded man approached from my right with his arms full of weapons and armor. A mercenary from the north, one of an elite group known as the Winter Wolves, I recognized him. He screamed at me to take some equipment, and that things were looking bad all over the town before running off to the next person he could find. I grabbed the first thing I could take hold of, a suit of chain mail, and turned to run with my sword in my hand. If these creatures were rising from the ground, there was no way to predict where they might emerge next. My loved ones were not safe. They needed to hide. Locations rushed through my mind as I moved, donning the shirt of mail as I rushed. Almost a dozen beasts emerged from the hole in the ground, and their leader was bulldozing through a small platoon of Winter Wolves. I watched the spears break upon its hide, as it rushed forward, swinging down with its thick powerful arms, sending its sword like claws ripping through a mercenary's body and armor. I veered left, aiming to run down the street behind it and several other beasts moved to intercept me. Corrupted humans, mangy and bearing white eyes with sharp teeth and claws, I had killed many of their kind. They were dangerous almost exclusively in numbers. Unquala guided my blade, carving through them easily as I rushed past, rounding a corner and leaving two dead behind me. I was approaching the fletcher's shop where I last saw Illiv when I saw him fighting like mad among almost a dozen creatures. Two of them were taller than the others, with multiple spider like limbs, darting between the hordes of the others as Illiv fought them from a doorway. There were many dead in the street in front of him, and in the shop behind him. He had two swords and was moving with the fervor of the Seven. He was a god. I had never seen him so fast, so full of rage, screaming and hacking through limbs like a devil called from hell. He parried every attack, slicing and cutting as he blocked. I rushed behind the group facing the doorway, holding my sword back and swinging with all my force into the scaly back of one of the taller creatures. I almost cut the spindly creature in half with the blow, and watched as its upper torso torqued around, revealing an angular face with a collection of different sized eyes and needle teeth. As the two of us began to thin their numbers, I could see that Illiv was not standing as strong as I originally thought. He was bleeding hard from several wounds on his chest, shallow scratches inflicted by the quick slashing attacks of the larger forsaken, and blood soaked his left pant leg. As seconds passed that felt like hours, a darkness blocked out any sun from overhead. A hissing rattle filled the air, and as I felled a withered shell of a humanoid creature, Illiv rushed past me. I turned around to see what he sought, as the darkness passed from overhead and saw a Forsaken landing upon the ground behind us, with great black wings folded behind it. It held in its red six fingered hands a spear the size of a small tree with a glowing red tip larger than most bucklers. Three similar sized spears hung on its back between its wings. An eyeless humanoid, twice as tall as any man, it roared forth from its three lipless mouths a great laughing hiss as Illiv charged it, screaming at me to run. There was no fear and no hesitation as I bolted forth south, hearing Illiv shouting forth war cries in the First tongue. There was carnage all around, and the smaller creatures seemed to be filling every road. As I rushed south through the town though the streets began to open up, and I was able to travel faster. I almost rushed past an alleyway, clogged with beasts, and may very well have done so if I did not hear a young female warcry from inside. I knew it was Sofia. There were six of the creatures in the alley, but I had to rush past almost a dozen more to get to them, slashing at their backs and legs. I felt claws upon my own back, and grabbing my arms. I shook them off, screaming, and kicking and flailing, as I caught a glimpse of my eldest sister, fighting off two of the beasts with a short sword and shield in the alley. My aunt was nowhere to be seen, and her sister's corpse lay at her feet, with the skull split and spilling forth grey matter. Time slowed down again. There were not enough creatures to kill as I hacked my way to Sofia. I remember telling her that I loved her, though whether I said it in the language of our people or in the common tongue that she was familiar with I do not recall. I stood in the alley with her behind me as countless beasts fell. Slowly though, we were pressed further and further into our looming graves, as bodies hemmed us in and cut off our retreat. Eventually other creatures came. Larger, more frightening abominations. Unquala gave me strength though, and as I chipped and broke my sword across their skulls I wheeled on my sister to take hers. I saw her, crying as I ripped the useless blade from her hands. I recall hearing a whisper in my mind, then. Hearing Unquala speak in my ear, telling me to kill her. That this gift of death she had given me required a sacrifice. I resented that voice, and let that hate fuel my rage further. I knew that I would. I was lost in this rage. Death had become me. Illiv was not her chosen, it was I. I did not want to survive any more. I was worse than these creatures, and they knew it. Eventually, I stood almost alone in the alley, amidst dozens of corpses, painted with their blood. The others had backed away. I saw him then. That Elder creature with his blazing spear, hissing and clicking, moving slowly towards me. It held out its left hand, palm showing towards me. There was white, black, and red smeared around it. I began to rush forward as it drew back its arm to hurl its spear. As it was cast I knew that the shot would miss me, and in the time between true time I realized that it was aimed towards Sofia who clawed at the corner of the alleyway sobbing, shaking, pressing herself into the corner of the alley like a frantic beast. As I lunged through the gore slick upon the ground I slipped just a bit as I dove towards my last tether to this world. I remember screaming for her to duck as I tackled her. The javelin, only slightly smaller than the mast of a ship, took me like an arrow piercing a moth. I sailed through the air, and felt my head hit the wall behind me hard as the javelin struck me and carried me with its flight. As I drifted out of this world, I felt Sofia safe in my arms. I awoke dead. I was propped up on the wall behind me, impaled. No, not impaled. The spear had only pierced my chain mail. I was stuck to it. So was Sofia, through her stomach. She reeked. Her face knew no peace. Struggling, panicking, I couldn't remove myself from the spear. I was stuck there. I held her hand. I waited to die. I prayed to die. I begged Unquala. I gave her my soul. I sat there and starved. I breathed in the scent of death, and it filled me. Carrion birds began to descend. I wanted them to pick out my eyes, but had to keep them away from Sofia. They would not come to me, and I hated them. I was in so much pain. I felt my world shrinking in on itself, and knew that I was dying. I closed my eyes and waited. She left me behind. Other mercenaries put their arms around me. They let me bury them. Everything was numb then. They fed me. I fed myself. I couldn't die. I found Illiv's sword. I kept it, and walked away. I went to the wastes. I wanted to end as much consciousness as I could. Mine and theirs. I succeeded. I destroyed myself. I am not Zed. Zed may exist as a memory that leaks forth now and again, but only rarely does my soul channel him forth. He's still missing something though. He can't stop. He can't think anymore. He just repeats the past, like a ghost. Unquala gave me visions. She chose me. She wanted me, because I understand her. I understand that death is a gift. It is peace. I am her soul, embodying her will in this place. You were chosen by her too. Have you not felt it? I saw it in your eyes. In the scars all over your body. You can help me. You know the people. Mercenaries, soldiers, men who have felt her claws on their minds. I need you to be her right hand. To lead when I am taken by her will, my mind sleeping in her embrace. To be real, while I am not. Will you accept, Evarus?